Hospitals, nursing homes, private homes and all other places likely to house invalids require a means for transporting partially or fully immobilized patients from one location to another. In some situations, a patient may be transferred with a fixed gantry assembly of the type shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,038,425 to Merry.
Other circumstances require that the patient mover itself be mobile. This occurs when a patient must be moved from one room to another, from one floor to another, from one building to another and so on. Several patient movers currently find use in various health care environments providing such services. These patient movers are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,104,399 to Dalton, U.S. Pat. No. 3,222,029 to Hildeman and U.S. Pat. No. 3,659,594 to Schwab. All of these patient lifters are of the crane type including a base portion having wheels, an upright support for supporting the patient a given distance above the base, and a cantilevered boom extending over the base for raising and lowering the patient. The cantilevered portion typically pivots with respect to the upright support when the patient is either raised or lowered by the cantilevered boom.
However, it is not necessary for the boom to move in order to raise and lower a patient. In fact, the pivoting of the boom creates an unstable situation in which the assembly can topple and whereby the patient could be injured. Moreover, the pivoting boom assemblies cannot lift significant loads.